God Goes Before You
Do you feel God’s hand on you?
Verse of the Day
‘You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.’
Today’s Devotional
This will be our last verse from Psalm 139, though I think each verse from this beautiful chapter speaks to our identity. God loves you so very much. If you ever have doubt about that, I strongly encourage you to go back to read this chapter.
It’s one thing to be known by the Creator God. And the last few days have shown us that we are known by God in an incredibly detailed way. In addition to being known in such specific ways by God, let’s look at what today’s verse teaches us about our identity.
God goes before you. Literally, if you think about your day tomorrow, God is already there. I have never been so important in human terms that my attendance at an event required an advance team. I’ve never needed other humans to go ahead of me and clear the way, make sure everything will be safe, and that my needs will be taken care of. But this verse tells us that God does exactly that for you. God is your advance Man. He goes ahead of you, for every single step that you take. If something about your future feels scary or uncertain, rest assured that God is already there. That’s how important you are to God.
God follows you. He does not follow behind you to make sure you never mess up or to punish you when you do. He does not follow behind you to clean up your messes, like we have to do with toddlers. God follows you so that He is always behind you to catch you when you fall. He is always your safe place to land when you can no longer handle the pressures of this world. He follows you so that He can be your place of refuge and healing for the way this world might harm you. God is your safety net.
God places His hand of blessing on your head. You may not feel it. You may want more tangible evidence of this beautiful truth. But if you look back over your life, you can see how this is true. Something you were really disappointed about turned out to be the very best outcome (that you could not have seen in the moment)- that’s God’s hand of blessing. You step out in obedience and through your fear and receive an unexpected kindness- that’s God’s hand of blessing. You dive into the Word to discover your God-given identity and something starts to shift in the way you see yourself- that’s God’s hand of blessing. His hand is on you now, whether you are aware of it or not.
You are precious to God. So precious that He is your advance team and your safety net. So precious that His hand is on you at all times. It’s time that we start to believe these things about ourselves.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How have you seen God go before you in the past?
How has God been your safe place to land?
How have you felt God’s hand of blessing in your life?
How precious do you think you are to God?
How can you welcome the truth of how precious you are to God into your heart?